Approach to Counselling
Approach to Counselling
Our approach to counselling is to listen, respond, and be creative whenever possible, to meet the unique needs of people. We do our best to be sensitive and responsive to both verbal and non-verbal cues. We incorporate knowledge of holistic and evidence-based best practices, balanced with empathy and intuition.
We bring an understanding of our identity and cultural views, as well as their impact on others. We are careful about disclosing aspects of our lived experience, in an appropriate and intentional way to connect and relate with people. We like to customize our approach and style to a person's unique individual needs and preferences.
Maintaining a detached and non-reactive presence with people is important, even when we are "tested" or "triggered." Our attention and focus is on being tuned in to each person's feelings and needs. We believe the people who work with us are experts on their own lives and are empowered when activating their own personal resources and strengths.
We embrace and welcome diversity, which means there is no 'one size fits all' model. We are guided by best practices and lived experience to meet people's needs. We recognize everyone is at a different stage with their motivation and readiness for change.
We advocate for and practice a trauma-informed approach. This builds knowledge and awareness about how trauma affects our lives. It also emphasizes safety and trustworthiness; opportunities for choice, collaboration, and connection; and it is strengths-based, so the focus is on skill building for solutions that help people recover from adversity. Overall, we like to think of the relationship we build as a partnership where you are the expert and driver of decision making in your life, and we serve as guides.
The general skills and strategies we use in counselling include relationship building, exploring and probing, empowering and strength building, and promoting change. With relationship building, we recognize the importance of generating certain core conditions (such as positive regard, empathy, congruence and genuineness). We practice active listening (through use of attending, silence, paraphrasing, summarizing, and questioning). Together, we define and sustain the counselling relationship and address immediate issues in the present here-and-now moment. We do this by checking in on feelings and needs within the counselling relationship and by navigating any conflicts that may arise.
We use exploring and probing skills like directives, encouragers, limited self-disclosure, and humour. Empowering skills that are offered include teaching, sharing information, supporting, and searching for your strengths. We prefer to encourage change at a reasonable pace (somewhere in the middle between not too easy and not too difficult) and will use challenging, confronting, and action planning strategies when it seems appropriate.
Counselling sessions typically move through one or more different phases. These include a preliminary or planning phase; a beginning phase where we engage, explore problems and feelings; an action phase where change may be initiated; and an ending phase where we decide to close the relationship and may consider a referral or transition to other resources.
Our approach with counselling is intended to be dynamic and flexible. Although it rarely follows a straight line or fits neatly into a box, there are times when a structured or step-by-step process is beneficial. We will support a more linear approach, if it is requested, or if it feels more suited to your needs at any stage during the counselling relationship.
Cultural identity is important to many people. We welcome and embrace clients with diverse cultural identities across the spectrum of age, sexuality, gender, abilities, religion, spirituality, ancestry, ethnicity, socio-economic class, and geographic regions. We have have developed a primary interest and focus on assisting young adults (ages 19-35) and middle-age adults (ages 36-55). We are allied with people who value diverse spiritualities and those who identify with mixed European and Indigenous ancestry. We aim to provide culturally responsive, fair, and safe counselling services.
For more information, please refer to our Counselling Methods.